Research on Volunteering

Understanding the health benefits of volunteering for older adults can provide multiple opportunities for increasing the impact of nonprofit organizations, and the quality of life generally in our communities. From a volunteer management perspective, this has implications for recruitment, retention, and reporting.

In this Research to Practice, reviewer Laurie Mook looks at an analysis of 73 peer-reviewed articles on the benefits associated with volunteering among the growing demographic of older adults. The goal of the meta-analysis was to acquire a comprehensive view of how formal volunteering might protect against cognitive decline and dementia. Although many activities provide social, physical, and cognitive opportunities for older adults that have been shown to result in health-related benefits, volunteerism has an added dimension: altruism. Here we explore how strategic volunteer management can add to making a difference.

Organizations use many different approaches to attract and retain volunteers. For instance, one attempt at a macro level is required high school service, which aims in part to inspire large numbers of students to continue with volunteering into their adult lives by having them engage in volunteering during high school. 

This Research to Practice looks at another approach: conducting a reflective activity after volunteering to promote an intrinsic desire to volunteer. It is based on a novel field experiment study conducted in a controlled setting in order to provide clear evidence for the causal impact of reflective activity. The study found that those who had an incentive to complete a task (writing about the benefits of volunteering) that complemented their volunteer activity became more interested in volunteering going forward than those who volunteered but did not participate in the reflective activity. The study provides food for thought regarding the use of this mechanism, not only for retaining volunteers but also for providing important data to document the impact of the organization.

Cees M. van den Bos, a pioneer in the volunteering field in the Netherlands, recently discovered that there was very little academic research on the subject of volunteering infrastructure. So he set out to investigate the establishment, development, and functioning of local volunteering infrastructure since the 1970s in these eight countries: Denmark, England, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States.

In this special e-Volunteerism issue devoted to Volunteer Centers, van den Bos presents his research and findings on volunteering infrastructure, and shares his conclusion that Volunteer Centers should be defined as “agencies that have the mission to support volunteers, volunteer-involving organizations, and volunteering in general.” He specifically notes that Volunteer Centers are characterized by six functions: brokerage, the marketing of volunteering, the development of good practices, the development of volunteering opportunities, and the strategic development of volunteering.

Through his important research, van den Bos provides insights and findings that he argues are “relevant for makers of volunteering policies, for people working within the volunteering infrastructure, and for countries that aspire to establish a volunteering infrastructure.” And, he concludes, the “legitimacy of volunteering infrastructure cannot be considered outside the context of the increasing political recognition of civil society and civic engagement. Political interests in the concepts of civil society and civic engagement in the eight cases investigated has caused volunteering to be rediscovered and re-evaluated.”

This quarter’s Research to Practice contributes to the theme of Volunteer Centers. Reviewer Laurie Mook looks at a study of the direct and secondary impacts of the HandsOn Network and its affiliated member organizations: Measuring the Impact of HandsOn Network: An Evaluation of Direct and Secondary Impact from the Stakeholder Perspective.

Based in Atlanta, GA, HandsOn calls itself “the largest network of local volunteer centers around the world,” with 250 affiliates. Whereas previous studies relied on self-reports from affiliates to provide evidence of their impact, the researchers in this study used surveys and interviews to collect data directly from affiliates, community partners, and volunteers. Based on the perspectives of these groups, the researchers developed a conceptual framework that other Volunteer Centers and other intermediaries can use to measure the impact of their work.  

The Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA) provides consulting services to nonprofit volunteer programs across the United States and Canada. VPA consultants are graduate students and faculty from five universities who volunteer their time to work one-on-one with leaders of volunteers. VPA was established with the help of funding from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which continues to provide financial support for volunteer programs – within the animal welfare sector and beyond – to receive VPA at no cost. Currently, VPA is seeking to expand its outreach efforts and diversify its nonprofit client base.

In this e-Volunteerism feature, four authors from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte provide a brief history of VPA, an overview of the process, and a summary of its success to date. Based on normative data from over 100 nonprofits, the authors describe three common areas for improvement among volunteer programs. They also provide additional information for those interested in participating in VPA.

The debate continues over whether or not students in service-learning placements should be considered volunteers, and this type of unpaid labor often falls under the purview of a volunteer resource manager. Indeed, engaging service-learners is one strategy that can be used to extend the work of an organization.

There are many studies about the impact of service-learning from the perspective of the student and the campus. This quarter’s Research to Practice looks at one of the few studies that analyzes the impact of service-learning on the community partner. This study, “Service-learning from the supply side: Community capacity to engage students” (Littlepage, Gazley & Bennett, 2012), is based on a sample of over 1,000 nonprofit and religious organizations in two counties in Indiana. It provides important insights for volunteer resource managers who are considering or already engaging service-learners.

In the last quarter century, nonprofits have increasingly been held accountable for the resources that have been entrusted to them. For some organizations, accountability mechanisms have been imposed left, right, and center, as funders and donors seek to monitor the use of the funds they provide. While a reasonable amount of accountability is beneficial all around, too much emphasis on this measure can be stifling and may indeed have exactly the opposite effect of what it intended to promote: efficient and effective use of resources.

While we generally can find information on the financial resources used by nonprofits, public disclosure of the amount and significance of volunteer contributions to those organizations is far less common. In this Research to Practice, Laurie Mook presents the findings of researchers in Australia who set out to determine just how organizations account for volunteer services. The study involved over 400 nonprofit organizations. The researchers systematically reviewed these organizations’ websites and annual reports for any disclosure of volunteer contributions, including their acknowledgement; how they supported mission and the wider community; human resources measures such as the number of volunteers and hours contributed; and policies guiding their involvement.

How well did the organizations do in discharging their accountability for their reliance on and use of volunteer contributions? Too much, too little or just right? As Mook reveals, the results are enlightening.

In 2009, Jeffrey L. Brudney and Lucas C.P.M. Meijs proposed a new way of thinking about volunteer resources: as a natural resource which must be managed sustainably or it will be exhausted. In their article, "It Ain’t Natural: Toward a New (Natural) Resource Conceptualization for Volunteer Management" (published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Volume 38, Issue 4, and reviewed in e-Volunteerism by Steven Howlett), the authors argued that volunteer energy should be viewed as a human-made, renewable resource that people can grown, recycle and influence positively as well as negatively.

Do you have a fresh concept for building your volunteer program, and you wonder if anyone has ever tried it before? Or perhaps you need someone with formal skills in scientific methods to help you design a plan for implementation? When you need answers to both of these issues, you can turn to academic research and research practitioners. Exploration of research literature can result in ideas and evidence to support best practices in volunteer engagement, and results can be multiplied through collaborative partnerships with faculty and student scholars.

In this article, Janina M. Fuller presents a practical approach to mining scholarly literature and to finding colleagues in academia to create partnerships that will expand your research horizons even further. Seeking research-based articles that offer fresh insights into the everyday concerns of volunteer management professionals? Writing a grant proposal to fund a new programming initiative? Whatever your goal, this article will provide new access to the vast and largely untapped resource of scholarly literature, and to the people who create it.